Get Moving

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers
(Thank you Bruce)
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Truly one of the great dangers of life is complacency.

"Well, now I've got everything just the way I want it. Now I can relax." Oh, yeah? What's that rumbling in the distance?

"I fixed those drain pipes last year, there won't be any more water on the back porch." (Rumble, rumble)

"I can handle these mortgage payments with my new job. No problem." (Rumble)

"My college education is all paid for." "I get all the news in the morning over breakfast. That's all I need." "My daughter's new boy friend is a great guy. I trust him." "Why bother with snow tires on the car. They say it's going to be a mild winter." "I've got a great health insurance plan if anything should happen." "My brother is a stock broker. He handles all my investments." "The case will never go to court." "Now that I'm retired I'm going to take it easy." (Rumble, rumble, rumble.) There's a locomotive heading down the track and you are right in the way.

Life is unfinished business. There is always something to do. The joy of life is to see what has to be done, do it and then say "what's next?" Take it from me, retirement is not the bucket of fluff some people think it is. The challenges don't end. The tears don't stop. The laughter goes on. And the joy of living lasts, as long as we don't sit calmly in our complacent rocking chair and wait for the end.

"Hey, you, on the right track. Get moving!"

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Sing Me Your Song

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good.

John Zorn
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I love music. It is probably the most important thing in my life. My love of music goes back to my childhood. No one in my house listened to music although my sister was a singer and a reasonably good pianist. But there was no music in the home except for an $11 plastic AM radio, which was my constant companion.

I wanted to become a musician. I bought books on musical composition, some of which I still have, Someone gave me a violin and I tried to learn how to play it. I studied voice and piano. But I finally had to admit that I had no talent for music. So I became an actor instead.

Years later I found that I might have made a fairly good clarinetist when I had the occasion to play one. Some day I may buy a clarinet if I can, and find out.

One of the most amazing things I've discovered over the years is that there is music in everything. Trees and buildings sing their songs and we can hear them if we only listen. A flower has a silent song which we can hear with our minds if we listen.

Music has been called the universal language. On a basic level that means a violinist from Japan and a pianist from Sweden who don't speak each other's languages can share a profound life experience by playing a Mozart violin and piano sonata together. Nationality and cultural differences don't get in the way.

But there's more to it. All music, even the most modernly dissonant is speaking directly to the human sensitivity, the human heart and mind. Thus any human being on earth can appreciate and respond to it. Experience and taste dictate what one is likely to listen to but it is all available, silent or otherwise, to the human consciousness.

There can be no doubt about there being music in outer space and one day it will be recorded and heard if it hasn't been already by some curious scientist.

Music is melody, harmony and rhythm, the cranium, rib cage and pelvis, the thought, feeling and action, the root, stem and blossom of life.

One day a coworker heard me singing a Donovan song and, knowing I was an expert in classical music, wondered why I knew it. I said that I knew all kinds of songs, because I listen to all kinds of music. A music lover will. I love classical music. I also love jazz, blues, rock, country, blue grass, salsa, folk from all over the world. While some of the snobs around me were turning up their noses at Liberace, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo, I was hearing them and finding something good in all of it.

A melody will make the emotions sing, the intricacies of harmonic progressions will fascinate the mind and rhythm will energize the spirit. Music is the language of life. It's the one true metalanguage. I love music.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Good People

The bad learn from the good, not honoring their teachers.

Lao-Tzu
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I have been influenced over the years by many great writers, painters and composers, and I often mention their names. But there have been others, people I have known personally, who have inspired me, in one way or another, to seek and find the good in my career and my life. No doubt I have not honored them as much as I should have. Many of them are gone now and can't be contacted. But all can be honored here.

The people I need to thank for teaching me about good.

Marston Balch
Dick Barnet
Henry Bate
Linda Bate
Mr. Bush
(high school English teacher, I have ruefully forgotten his first name)
Erwin Canham
Tom Clancy
Gregory D'Alessio
Thomas Fogarty
Marshall Glazier
Frank Hansen
Roy Irving
Norman Mailer
Duncan Pirnie
Lawrence Sherman
Edward Thoman
Bill Watson
Earl Wild
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Thank you folks, I honor you.

Dana Bate
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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The Race Is On

A runner must run with dreams in his heart.

Emil Zatopec



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I did some running in school but soon realized it was not the sport for me. Soon after each race began the pain set it and I realized it was an contest against pain, among other things. So I stopped. But I still admire watching good runners and can appreciate what they are doing to some degree.

The first famous runner of history was Pheidippides. The legend says that he ran from the battlefield where the very outnumbered Athenian army had just won the battle at Marathon against the Persians under King Darius. That story is probably not true, but the historian Herodotus wrote that Pheidippides did run 145 miles to plead with the Spartans to send help to the Athenians. At the end of the run he supposedly died from exhaustion. Not surprising. The Spartans did not send any help to the Athenians in spite of the hope Pheidippides carried in his heart. But the Athenians won the battle anyway.

Emil Zatopec, who is quoted above, was a gold medal winning runner from Czechoslovakia. One notable achievement of his was entering in to a marathon at the last minute, even though he had never run one before, and winning it.

Zatopec said of the start of his career, "I had to run, and when I got started, I felt I wanted to win. But I only came in second. That was the way it started."

Roger Bannister, now SIR Rager Bannister want to be a doctor. He started running as child, to and from school. He went on the astonish the world by running the mile in under 4 minutes, in spite of the myths spread that said it couldn't be done. Sir Roger said, "The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win."

The most recent history making runner is Edison Pena who with 32 other Chilean miners spend 69 days trapped under the ground. Not knowing for sure if they would ever get out alive, edison ran every day. He ran back and forth in that mine shaft. they were all eventually saved and Edison was invited to come to New York to watch the NYC Marathon. But Mr. Pena wanted to run instead so he did. Even though he had to stop for medical attention, he went back out and finished the race with ice taped around his knee. His time was 5 hours and 40 minutes.

Edison Pena said, "When I ran in the darkness, I was running for life. "I was running to show that I wasn't just waiting around. I was saying to that mine, 'I can outrun you. I'm going to run until you're just tired and bored of me.'"

We are all runners in this human race, and we must keep the dreams alive.

DB - The Vagabond

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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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I'm Abnormal

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Frank Zappa
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One of the saddest of things to me is to know of people who have been disappointed in life, who have to give up on things they had hoped for. To have one's heart and mind set on something, on some good goal, a blessing, an achievement, and have to give it up, is tragic. It happens to all of us to one degree or another.

One of the frequent reasons for its happening is that we plan to do things the way we are supposed to. We are usually too young to know ourselves sufficiently to accommodate changes and unexpected events which define us differently from the life, personality and character we have given ourselves.

The people in my family and my friends' families tried to live very doctrinaire, orthodox lives. They did the things and thought the things they were "supposed to." I didn't, and as a result I was being called "abnormal." It took me many years to get over the idea that my abnormality was a curse of some kind, that I needed to have my "head examined."

I knew a man who, while still young, was a successful artist out west. He married and came east expecting to establish himself here in his field. But he and his wife soon started having children he had to feed and clothe. So he gave up his dreams and put himself into a higher paying position in which he was also successful. I met him again years later and found that he was remorseful at not having had the life he dreamed about for himself.

I took a lesson, partly from him, partly from others I knew who were suffering the same sadness and from myself when I got enough influence from writers and other artists to accept my abnormalities and move on with life. The results I have suffered as a result have all been bearable.

I've observed from my life in theatre how easy it is for some people to fall into the trench of sameness, of doing things the way you are supposed to do them. On the other hand I've also seen to my great joy other people who have been welcome deviates, those who have eschewed the proper way of doing things and broken down confining walls in the process.

You can always tell when someone has turned his back on the norm, branched out into the world of imagination and progressed into a saner place by the imitators he gets. But those imitators have simply taken the inovations and made them the norm, "the way to do things." Thus progress is made.

Thank heaven there are always going to be people who are willing to be abnormal, to be deviates and to show the world a better way to go.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Watch The Sword

Year by year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men.

Charles Dickens
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There is a sword hanging over America's head and it was put there by the Founding Fathers. Most of those who freely refer to those men have no bedrock idea who they were. Someone should write a book, if it hasn't already been written, about what happened to those men who signed the Declaration of Independence. How many lost their property, how many lost their families, how many were tortured by the British, how many were killed.

To stand up against the most powerful nation in the Western World took unimaginable courage and faith, what Schopenhauer called "reckless optimism." If we had lost the War of Independence George Washington would have been tortured and hung on the street in London, and he knew it.

And why did they do it, that disparate crowd of men who frequently disagreed with each other but who came to agree about what they had to do, to make a nation, a new land, a land of the free and courageous, a beacon to the world that personal rights and self government were achievable ideas. And along with that commitment came a challenge sent to the future, sent to us, from the hearts of men who risked everything.

When Charles Dickens visited America he observed American institutions and our way of life and found how much it had degenerated even in 100 years. Slavery was everywhere, rudeness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, all things he didn't expect of find. He wrote "Year by year, the memories of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, by the bad life of their degenerate child."

The current state of politics in this country is a betrayal of the gifts of those original thinking men and women. The avowed agendas of the recently elected members of Congress are a disgrace. Other nations are saying without equivocating that they don't want us in their lands. Worn out useless contracts are being brought out for acceptance by people who have not learned the ways of good government. Our future as a world leader and beacon is uncertain. Politicking has become a macabre joke, third rate entertainment. There are "decent men," intelligent adults in this country, somewhere. The sword doesn't need to fall. But it's hanging there.

DB
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Owning Yourself

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself.

Michel de Montaigne
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Imagine if you woke up one morning and found a bucket of worms and two fishing poles in your kitchen that weren't there when you went to bed, and no one in your home fishes. Or imagine that some friend has convinced you that you really must go out and take a course in disco dancing even though you've never had an interest in it. Or what if you suddenly decided to have a career as a scuba diver even though you've never done it. Crazy, you say? Yes, but things just as crazy happen to us all the time.

One day I went into a shoe store in Manhattan to buy a pair of shoes. The salesman measured my foot and brought out two boxes of shoes to try them on. Both of the pairs had tassels on them. I asked if I could see some shoes without tassels, but he wouldn't show me any. He said the tassels were in style and I wouldn't look right if I didn't have them.

Now I have nothing against tassels, on shoes or anywhere, so I stared at those shoes trying to imagine myself wearing them. It was a moment of self discovery. I finally left without making a purchase. I don't know everything about myself but one thing I know for sure is that I am not a man who wears tassels on his shoes.

On day years ago my girl friend brought home a squid from the supermrket. Neither one of us knew how to cook a squid. I looked in The Joy Of Cooking but the directions were very complicated and the fact was we really didn't like squid. I don't know what possessed her to buy it but it sat in the refrigerator taking up space until we finally threw it out.

While in California I applied for a job as manager of a large Hollywood movie theatre, the kind of place that premiers new films. I could no more have done that job than fly to the moon. I don't know what urged me to apply for it but I'm grateful I wasn't hired.

Now, instead of fishing poles, squid and tasseled shoes, apply the same searchlight internally and find how many ideas, opinions, certainties, facts, convictions, patterns of speech and quirks of behavior you have that aren't really yours. Why do we pick things up from various sources and make them, or try to make them, our own? It's amazing how much we are influenced by things, most of which in the clear light of our reason make no sense at all. They wear us like tassels attached to us. They become unnecessary parts of our lives like fishing poles in the kitchen or squid in the refrigerator. If we don't reject them immediately they become part of us, taking up space in our lives, in our minds. Eventually we find out how useless they are and we have to throw them out.

The healthy, but often difficult, thing to do is to take inventory of ourselves, to face those moments of self discovery, to determine what possesses us that isn't true to us. It may be impossible to track some things down to their origin but to uncover them enables us to weigh their value and discard what is really useless or interfering with our harmony and reality.

Who owns the title to you? Who has the deed? And how much of you doesn't belong to you?

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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